True North Groups: A Powerful Path to Personal and Leadership Development

TRUE NORTH GROUPS

BEST-SELLING BOOKS BY BILL GEORGE

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True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership (2007) (with Peter Sims)

Finding Your True North: A Personal Guide (2008) (with Andrew McLean and Nick Craig)

7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis (2009)

TRUE NORTH GROUPS

A Powerful Path to Personal and Leadership Development

Bill George and Doug Baker

True North Groups

Copyright © 2011 by Bill George and Doug Baker

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First Edition

Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-60994-007-2

PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-60994-008-9

IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-60994-009-6

2011-1

Project management and design by Valerie Brewster, Scribe Typography.

Copyediting by Todd Manza. Proofreading by Don Roberts. Index by George Draffan. Cover image: istock © Stephen Strathdee.

This book is dedicated to the members of our men’s group and our couples group who have shared with us so much of themselves, their wisdom, their caring, and their love for so many years.

CONTENTS

Foreword

Preface

INTRODUCTION

Finding Depth and Intimacy in Your Life

CHAPTER 1

True North Groups

CHAPTER 2

Your Personal and Leadership Development

CHAPTER 3

Forming Your Group

CHAPTER 4

Norming

CHAPTER 5

Storming

CHAPTER 6

Performing

CHAPTER 7

Reforming Your Group

CONCLUSION

Why Your True North Group Is Important in Your Life

RESOURCES

1 Start-Up Curriculum (First Twelve Topics)

2 Additional Program Ideas

3 The Group’s Initial Meeting

4 Member Contract

5 Meeting Formats

6 Ground Rules for Group Discussions

7 Guide for Facilitating Groups

8 Member Satisfaction Survey

9 Group Retreats

10 Adding New Members to Existing Groups

11 Giving and Receiving Feedback

12 Research Process

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index

About the Authors

The True North Groups Institute

FOREWORD

MANY, MANY BOOKS COME ACROSS MY READING TABLE each year, but it has been a long time since one of them impressed me so much as this one has. It is a wisdom guide to help us to look deeper, to honor the essential and sacred traditions of living communities, and to take this one wild and precious life seriously.¹

We are storytelling animals. As our hunter-gatherer ancestors sat around the fire carving arrows and eating berries, they told stories which in time were woven into the tapestry of daily life. These stories were the first encyclopedia of human knowledge. They explained where the world came from, why there are people, and why the gods put fire and death on earth. Stories told the people of a tribe who they were, where they had been, where they were going, and how to stay friendly with the spirits.

For over thirty years I have explored, researched, written about, and been invited to speak about how we shape our stories into more purposeful lives. Lately, more people have been asking if and how I am shaping my own story and what helps me sustain a purposeful journey day by day throughout the year.

I always find myself realizing that I could never live purposefully without my tribe — people who are on a shared path with me. By tribe, I mean people who truly get me and understand and reflect back to me my true story. They know how to pose a powerful question and are rarely reluctant to ask it. It is their curiosity that keeps me curious and alive.

To be a person is to have a story to tell. We become grounded in the present when we color in the outlines of the past and the future. Within each of us there is a tribe with a complete cycle of stories. It is impossible to create a meaningful life alone. In truth, we do little completely alone. We depend on a living community — a true north group — to accompany us each step of the way. We might see ourselves as self-sufficient, which I often do, but we ignore the essential, life-giving companionship upon which our very lives, livelihoods, and longevity depend.

Bill and Doug clearly show us how to create that living community. They ask us wise questions and show us the practices that lead us to our own answers. There is one question in particular that I find very compelling in my work as an executive coach: "What are you up to?" Bill and Doug believe, as I do, that each of us is up to something very special with our lives. They believe that each of us is born with a unique gift and a sacred duty to fulfill its promise.

This gift, for each of us, is the pathway to a meaningful life. It is the pathway to our livelihood — our life’s work. All of life is viewed as a quest to answer the core true north question, What are you up to?

Many of us at various points in our own lives are a little vague about what we’re up to. Maybe even utterly confused.

Poet Mary Oliver poses the question in another way: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Wild and precious? Do you reflect, as I do, that you may not be living up to your precious possibilities in life?

Doug and Bill have been living with this and similar questions for many years! Perhaps this is why they created their own True North Group over thirty years ago.

But this book is not about Doug and Bill; it’s about you. So, can we dig a little deeper? What is a wild and precious life to you? And how does it differ from your current life?

Let’s face it: just getting through life today with some semblance of success is a major feat. Many of us, however, spend less than 20 percent of our precious time engaged in what might be called meaningful activity — talking with friends about what matters, observing spiritual practices, helping others, or performing meaningful work. It doesn’t have to be that way. Our precious lives don’t have to be dominated by busyness.

We may find ourselves on different paths, but it’s essential that we are on different paths together. Isolation is fatal! It’s important that we don’t tackle life alone. The gift is free. But its expression requires support. And that’s the essence of a True North Group — to share the path in helping us claim our gift and heed our calling.

Still, it takes no small courage to be willing to seek company on our journey — to ask to be accompanied. For many years I belonged to a circle of a dozen men who called themselves the Junto. Patterned after Benjamin Franklin’s group of the same name, we met nine times a year to exchange stories from our journeys and to share our challenges and blessings.

The magic of the Junto was due to the simple discovery that everyone yearned to share his story. When we tell our stories to one another, we — at one and the same time — find the meaning of our lives and are healed from our isolation and loneliness. Many religious traditions honor this essential practice. Likewise, many indigenous peoples honor this practice, realizing that they cannot possibly do the work of living, surviving, and healing alone.

We can’t truly tell who we are unless someone is listening. Strange as it may seem, self-knowledge begins with self-revelation. We don’t know who we are until we hear ourselves speaking the story of our lives to someone we trust to listen with an open mind and heart.

In my coaching work, I have rarely encountered a person who was not able to uncover the power of their individual purpose in a True North–type group and, having made that discovery, to find the possibility of truly living up to their wild and precious possibilities. Bill and Doug have made an important contribution indeed to that discovery process.

Richard Leider

Best-selling author of The Power of Purpose and

Repacking Your Bags

PREFACE

SINCE 1975, WE HAVE BEEN ACTIVELY INVOLVED IN small, personal groups that serve as the inspiration and the basis for True North Groups. True North Groups comprise six to eight peers who meet on a regular basis to discuss the important questions of their lives and to support each other during difficult times.

These groups have been a godsend in our lives and in the lives of hundreds of people we know. They have helped us navigate personal challenges with our families, our careers, and our health. They have provided a forum for addressing life’s most difficult questions about our beliefs, our values, and the meaning and purpose of our lives.

Over the years we have frequently been asked by friends and acquaintances, How can I form such a group? Originally, we set out to write a book to answer that question, a how to manual for creating True North Groups, as both of us do in our work these days.

As we interviewed a wide range of people participating in groups and studied the small-group movement in its larger sociological context, however, we recognized there is a much greater need for these groups and that they are part of a broader societal shift toward forming small groups. Thus, we expanded our focus to looking at the essential role True North Groups can play in human growth and leadership development and in filling the void that many of us feel in our lives.

We believe there is a unique role for personal, intimate groups that differs from the multitude of groups formed for specific purposes. By providing a safe place for deep, intimate discussions about life’s most challenging questions, True North Groups enable us to become fully human and more fully alive, awakening to the enormous possibilities within each of us. They are the best vehicle we know for helping us develop as human beings and as leaders. In a world where the difficulties we face every day often feel overwhelming, True North Groups provide a powerful path between our personal lives and the organizations we participate in.

This book is written for you, if you are interested in forming such a group. Or perhaps you want to enable your current group to have deeper and more meaningful discussions about the vital questions of life. It offers you a deeper understanding of the vital role a True North Group can play in your life and how you can form one. It shows how to create sound norms that enable the group to navigate successfully through the inevitable storms that all groups encounter and to emerge as a high-performing group.

It is our hope that your experiences with your groups will be as meaningful and rewarding as ours have been.

Bill George and Doug Baker

Minneapolis, Minnesota

April 2011

INTRODUCTION

Finding Depth and Intimacy in Your Life

WE YEARN TO SHARE THE STORIES OF OUR LIVES AND to have honest conversations with people we trust. Have you ever felt alone in a crowd? Were you eager to abandon the superficial conversations and share your authentic self and your feelings without fear of being judged?

We need people around us to whom we can look for support and advice, who can help us develop as human beings. We need them to help us become better leaders in our work, our communities, and our families. We want to be open and vulnerable, but who can we rely on to have our best interests at heart and maintain our confidentiality? Where can we find this kind of depth, intimacy, and support in our lives? Who do we talk to when we have great joy or sorrow in our lives or are facing difficult decisions?

The challenges we face these days are so great that we cannot rely entirely on ourselves, our communities, or our organizations to support us and help us stay on track. We need a small group of people with whom we can have in-depth discussions and share intimately about the most important things in our lives — our happiness and sadness, our hopes and fears, our beliefs and convictions.

We call these groups True North Groups because they help us follow